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Top Boulder County cops consider potential of stricter open carry laws

No single 'right answer' to difficult question

By Alex Burness

Staff Writer

Posted:
12/19/2015 10:00:00 AM MST

Updated:
12/21/2015 03:02:59 PM MST

The rear window of a Colorado Springs Police car is shattered after a shooting Oct. 31, 2015, in Colorado Springs. (Christian Murdock / The Gazette)

Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle started a recent conversation about open carry laws in Colorado by recounting a horror story that by now is tragically familiar to many in the state.

It was Halloween morning in Colorado Springs, when a woman named Naomi Bettis spotted her 33-year-old neighbor, Noah Harpham, dressed in a green jacket, armed with a rifle and walking in the street. She called 911.

But openly displaying a gun is legal in Colorado, and that's exactly what a police dispatcher told Bettis. Police deemed it "non-emergent, "and Harpham opened fire minutes later, killing three.

"The cops were in a really tough spot," Pelle said. "How do you respond to that? Let's say you go to the store and buy a rifle and sling it over your shoulder and go walking. Well, if we pull up, you're not doing anything illegal. We can't even force you to identify yourself. That's a huge problem in my eyes."

Law enforcement leaders in Boulder County all offered the same familiar lament when asked how they'd address the country's gun violence plague: There isn't one right answer, they say, but to the extent that a problem so endemic can be solved, a continued recognition of the connection between mental health and mass violence is a good start.

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On the topic of actual gun legislation, responses get much thornier. But in Pelle's view, any critical conversation on guns must include a re-examination of open carry laws. He believes they should be enforced differently in populated Front Range jurisdictions from, say, farming towns of eastern Colorado.

For now, throughout the state — except in Denver, which filed for and won an exemption from the open carry protection — the same law that Harpham's massacre brought to the fore applies. And the regularity of massacres like that, or the shooting of a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood the day after Thanksgiving, or the Dec. 2 killing of 14 in San Bernardino, Calif., continue to provide fodder for talk among citizens, politicians and police as to whether stricter open carry measures would have any potential to curb gun violence.

"I don't believe that a law that's good for Kit Carson County is also good for Boulder County or Arapahoe County," Pelle said. "Is it time that municipalities have more discretion in passing open carry prohibitions?"

Testa said he instructs his officers to respond in an "urgent" fashion that "plans for the worst possible outcome" were local dispatch to receive a call similar to the one made by Bettis. But, fact is, Boulder police say they don't respond to more than one or two calls every year of that nature. When it comes to guns, Testa said, his department's approach will continue to be situational.

"It's the context, it's the time, it's the place," he added. "And if somebody is carrying a rifle in on the street in Boulder, that is so alarming and so concerning, given the climate of what's been going on in this country, that we would definitely be responding."

Dave Hoover, a Jefferson County police sergeant whose nephew, A.J. Boik, was shot and killed during James Holmes' movie theater rampage in Aurora, wants to see all possible ambiguity removed.

"I understand where people are coming from when they say that carrying a gun in the open could save people, but it does harm. It scares the hell out of people," Hoover said.

"And then, when I get there as a police officer and I see a man standing there that's not in uniform with a gun, that person will be treated as a bad guy until I can confirm that he isn't. And even then, my attention has been distracted."

Savant Suykerbuyk, a staunch gun advocate and University of Colorado student who carries a concealed Glock everywhere he goes, is sympathetic to the confusion Hoover speaks of.

"If you see someone carrying a gun, what's to clue you in about whether or not they're going to snap in a second?" Suykerbuyk said. "I don't really have an answer for that."

Neither, apparently, does anybody else. But Suykerbuyk, like many gun advocates, argues that as long as the question continues to confound, society would do well to at least attempt to foster a more positive perception of people with guns, out of uniform.

"If somebody is carrying a pistol in a proper holster, and is dressed in such a way that projects a good image, that is the pinnacle of demonstration of responsibly armed citizens," said Savant Suykerbuyk, a University of Colorado student who carries a concealed Glock everywhere he goes.

Suykerbuyk is one of roughly 7,000 county residents concealed carry permits, and he wants the image of "responsibly armed" to be normalized, and laments that efforts to that end are regularly undermined in the U.S. by mass killings.

A balancing act with no easy answer

Longmont police Cmdr. Jeff Satur argues, however, that as long as there are millions of people with guns, it is inevitable that some of them will continue to stain the broader community's reputation.

"Same as people driving cars. There's a vast range," he said. "So it's a challenge for law enforcement all around the United States. That balancing act, with no easy answer."

It's difficult to find consensus within the topic, but Pelle, Testa and Satur all expressed the common sentiment that mass shootings have succeeded in spooking not only the citizenry, but police departments who wonder every day about their next calls.

"It's on all of our minds," Satur said. "All the agencies in the state, we have conversations about this stuff.

But perhaps it's time, he continued, to examine what police can do on the pre-emptive end, and possibly through action around open carry laws.

"I am very much a Second Amendment supporter. I've had guns my whole life," Pelle said. "But you can't be so staunch that you don't see there's room for some common sense. And I think if someone sees another person walking across a parking lot carrying a gun around, that if they call 911, police probably deserve the right to do a little more."

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